Will they un-mothball the Appleton prison?
Appleton, Minnesota is about 150 miles west and slightly north of downtown Minneapolis. Mostly a pleasant drive through farm country I would imagine. Though not if your destination was this:
The Prairie Correctional Facility is a vacant, 1,600-bed private prison located in Appleton, Minnesota.
Prairie was built by the city of Appleton and first opened, empty, in 1992. In March 1993 the city reached an agreement with the Puerto Rico Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to fill all 516 beds. The prison had been built by the city and was sitting empty. Through the years the prison was expanded twice, housed prisoners from Colorado, Idaho, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Washington, and Minnesota, and was a significant local employer.
Corrections Corporation of America bought the facility in 1997, and closed the prison in 2010 following declining demand for the facility by the State of Minnesota, which had recently constructed four new 416-bed housing units at Minnesota Correctional Facility – Faribault and added 250 new beds to Minnesota Correctional Facility – Moose Lake.
The Prairie Correctional Facility is the only privately-owned prison in the state of Minnesota.
(Wikipedia)
This has information on which “correctional facilities” in Minnesota are currently used for arrested undocumented immigrants:
ICE has agreements with the jails in Elk River in Sherburne County, Albert Lea in Freeborn County and Willmar in Kandiyohi County to use them as detention facilities for holding detainees.
(WCCO/CBS News)
Obviously if Trump and his goons continue with their plans for mass arrests they’ll need more room. It’s unclear to me whether they’ll need Congress to approve money for that.
Businesses, especially agricultural ones, who don’t want to see their workforces – in many cases the on the whole most reliable, productive, and law-abiding parts of their workforces – decimated will try to prevent or at least limit this, though in a mostly quiet, behind-the-scenes way. But Trump and his administration, impelled as they are by abject fear and bigotry, along with a perceived political need to placate the MAGA base even as grocery prices don’t come down as promised, are unlikely to change their approach or even agree to pull back somewhat. At least not any time soon.
All that said, my search for recent news this morning turned up no current indication that the feds under Trump are thinking about this. The idea was floated in 2019, and there was plenty of opposition.
Comment from Joe Musich: These lardollini Dr Phil assisted anti- immigration efforts are catching actual citizens at the rate of 30%. Does he think these people will not sue? In the end the raids will be something like that Minneapolis now bears for cop torture only on a grander scale. The arguments that they are only going after “criminals” is an Olympic pool filled with horse pucks. The guy has a history of penny pinching dime foolishness. Problem is he is able to pull the rest of us into his delusions. And also what the hell is a city thinking about when it invests its tax capital into a prison?
Thanks for your feedback. If we like what you have to say, it may appear in a future post of reader reactions.